Chameleon, hobby and jay encounter

My 11 year old found a nice chameleon in his way home from school and decided to keep it as a pet. He's just over 20 cm long, hard to measure him because much of the time he hunches up and curls his prehensile tail. I called him Murgatroyd for no good reason, he just looks like a 'Murgatroyd'. He and his little brother put together a 'terrarium' from a spare cage complete with earth and pruned Bauhinia branches. The boys have been catching flies and moths to feed it.( I instructed them about washing hands after handling flies of course). Murgatroyd was quite happy to take them from my son's fingers with his long sticky tongue and has been slowly phasing through his colour repertoire for us from pretty uniform dull greyish green to his leopard patches to matt green and almost white. I'm switching the chameleon pic I posted a few days ago to a pic husband took of Murgatroyd.. it's back a couple of entries at #66.

Meanwhile.. our six o'clock walk was pretty quiet today, as it was yesterday but for a very nice hobby sighting which I'll get to soon. Collared doves still active and cooing, flight calling and visiting the cistern. Greenfinches active around bunker area as in days past, hoopoe on the trail by the cistern, Syrian woodpeckers active and vocal as usual and an upsurge in graceful warbler noise. Probably the young males are now making themselves heard. Bulbuls, Jackdaws, Hooded Crows, House Sparrows, Feral pigeons, Senegal doves also seen and/or heard.
No show on the gazelles, hyrax alarm screech by the valley road but otherwise they weren't out and about so much.

Drama in the eucalyptus grove, repeated hobby calls 'ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki!' and another call, a single kee! at a slightly lower pitch, and brief glimpses of a hobby flying very low, just above the ground in the grove and northern part of east field. Sounded like either two hobbies having territorial dispute or perhaps a hobby and Captain Jack.. we looked out for the sparrowhawk but no sightings. Finally a hobby, very streaked and with some brown, flew off south. Seemed to be an immature.

A little while later, at least a quarter hour but I didn't check, more hobby calls in the grove. We both noticed it alight on a high side branch of a eucalyptus. Through binoculars I could see it had caught something but couldn't tell what, it was mostly in silhouette, but probably a smaller bird, such as one of those greenfinches. It held it with its talons and started to feed but within moments it had company. A Eurasian Jay was perched right below and clearly interested. Then the Jay flew up and flapped at the hobby, possibly with the hope of alarming it into dropping its kill. The hobby took off and flew south, undercarriage down, still apparently gripping its supper.
Possibly it was this bird that had chased the younger hobby out of its territory earlier.